re: One awful mess in the trucking industry currently unfolding

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ok, then I would be on the phone with all the other freight companies who are looking for owner operators.

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Lease operators are not the same as owner ops. Lease operators are the dumbest of the dumb - they lease the truck from the company and basically pay the notes and maintenance in return for ownership at the end if they make it that far, and most of the companies have massive baloon payments at the end that most drivers can't afford so the company repos it and sells the used truck. When something like this happens, the driver loses the truck because they do not own it - it belongs to the company. Had they leased it through a 3rd party they could swing over to a new company.

I absolutely loathe the companies that do lease purchase programs because it's a scam. 90% of the time they slow down that drivers productivity when it gets into the last 6 months of the contract so that they can set the truck up to be repoed via the balloon payment. The driver has been paying the notes on the truck, gets screwed out of the truck, then the company gets to sell the truck for $30k in the used markets. They pump these rookies up with the predatory advertising of "Own your own business!" and "The American Dream is yours today with $0 down!". I wish the feds would step in and end this nonsense.